


icarus, the child

by craftingdead



Series: charlie will make cd a common tag if it kills them [18]
Category: The Crafting Dead
Genre: Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Multi, Suicide Attempt, eden i blame You for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 12:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15841704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/craftingdead/pseuds/craftingdead
Summary: “Jump!” Sky calls. “I’ll catch you!”Nick looks down nervously. The ground is so far below—thirty feet or more, Sky yelled when he first ran in with Shelby pointing up to Nick and babbling a million miles per hour. Nick only climbed up here because she dared him to. Why did she have to go and get Sky? He could’ve gotten down all on his own—he didn’t need anybody's help!“I can get down on my own!” he yells back. The height was starting to make him dizzy. He feels sick to his stomach.





	icarus, the child

**Author's Note:**

> this is all eden's fault  
> fuck you eden.
> 
> mind the warnings, guys!

“Jump!” Sky calls. “I’ll catch you!”

Nick looks down nervously. The ground is so far below—thirty feet or more, Sky yelled when he first ran in with Shelby pointing up to Nick and babbling a million miles per hour. Nick only climbed up here because she dared him to. Why did she have to go and get Sky? He could’ve gotten down all on his own—he didn’t need anybody's help!

“I can get down on my own!” he yells back. The height was starting to make him dizzy. He feels sick to his stomach.

He curls his hair around his finger. His hair that cascades down his back, nearly wrapping around the tree branch his legs swing on either side of. The dirt and wood dig into his legs and scratches up the pair of shorts his dad bought for him. Nick hoped he wouldn’t be mad. His dad didn’t get mad easily—usually when one of them did something dangerous. He never yelled though. That was something Nick liked about him—even if he was mad enough that his face went bright red, he never yelled. He also liked combing Nick’s hair.

“C’mon!” Sky’s trying to get him to jump again. Nick chews on his lip nervously. On one hand, he’d be on the ground, safe in Sky’s arms, in the other… in the other Sky could miss and Nick would fall onto the hard forest floor. That would most definitely hurt.

Sky is waving his hands in the air, trying to catch his attention as Nick chews away at his lip and thinks. It was really, really high up here. He thinks he might throw up. “I’m scared!” Was that the wrong thing to say? He didn’t know.

His brother stops waving his arms. He thinks he sees Shelby pointing and saying something to him. Sky turns back to the tree, hands extended in front of him, a cheesy smile on his face. “C’mon! It’ll be like a trust fall! It’s simply a trust fall, nothing to be scared about!”

“But it’s so far down!”

“After you drop, it won’t be so far down anymore!” Sky says, and Shelby is nodding along with him. Tears burn in the back of his eyes but Brother was right—if Nick dropped, it wouldn’t be as far down as before. He’d be safe on the ground, with his brother and sister. Wouldn’t that be something? He blinks the tears away, taking in a shaky breath and exhaling.

“I’m gonna do it!” Shelby cheers. Sky nods and leans over, attempting to make it look like he held out his arms further. Nick swings one leg over the side of the branch, both of them hanging next to each other. He can see all the scratches on them. They sting.

“Ready?” Sky yells.

“Almost!” Nick calls back, steadying himself on the branch. The ground is really, really, really… really far away. Trees in the distance look only like specks to him, and he could see the gray clouds above head easily. He leans back as far as he can on this little branch, craning his neck towards the sky. If he looked really closely, he could just barely see the outline of a plane flying overhead….

The tree sways in the wind. The branch creaks. Than snaps, unable to hold Nick’s weight any longer.

He falls.

Nick hits the ground hard, the wind knocked from his lungs in a vicious burst. He can barely hear Shelby and Sky yelling over the ringing in his ears. He lifts an arm and can see blood, dripping off of his arm and onto the forest floor. There was so much blood compared to his skinny arm, bright red against the light brown he was so used to. Nick’s entire body felt limp; like he could snap at any moment. So delicate. His vision is fading.

Sky gets to him first, yelling something Nick can’t make out. He thinks it his names, the familiar syllables playing over and over again in his brother’s mouth. He smiles. “You said you’d catch me.”

Shelby covers her mouth with a hand as Sky lets out a choked sob. “Si, oh thank god you’re okay—that fall was so far, and we were so scared—”

“Ky, why didn’t you catch me?” he asks again, his words slurring.

His brother doesn’t respond at first, instead choosing to brush the curls out of Nick’s face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were gonna fall,” he whispers, what look to be tears streaming down his face. Shelby has similar ones on hers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry I didn’t catch you.”

“It’s okay.” Nick can hear someone else yelling now. He thinks it’s Shelby—he can’t see her anymore, so it must be. “It’s okay, Ky. I didn’t know I was gonna fall either.”

Sky lets out a shaky laugh, moving his hand away from Nick’s face. Then, asking a confused Nick to be brave, he moves an arm under Nick’s legs, the other under his back, and pulls him up, getting off his knees and onto his feet in the process.

Nick shrieks, a shrill, high-pitched noise that makes himself and Sky wince. The pain is nearly unbearable, racing up and down his body. Everything hurts. He didn’t know everything could hurt. Sky is talking again. “Hey, hey, hey. Don’t focus on the pain, that’ll only make it worse. Focus on something else, like how we’re gonna get ice cream after this is done, or, or that new show you’ve been obsessed with.” How _could_ he focus on anything else? Everything was pain: from his legs to his arms, to his chest, to his head. He swore even his hair was hurting—wait. Nick’s anger faltered.

“I wanna cut my hair,” he says. Nick didn’t know why or how he wanted to, he just did. He wanted to chop those curls off to at least shoulder length. He wanted them gone. Sky was quiet for a while.

“Alright. When we go home, I’ll ask dad to cut your hair.” Even though Nick knows Sky probably isn’t looking at him, he smiles.

“I’ll cut mine too so we can be matching!” Shelby says. His sister really was the best.

“And how about I cut mine too,” Sky laughs.

“Yours is too short!”

“Is not!”

Sky nearly trips over a dip in the path, and Nick lets out another cry of pain. The two fall silent. All he could hear was their steady footsteps, the birds chirping, and the whistling of the wind through the trees. The wind that knocked him off his branch. Sky sighs.

“When we get home, I’ll cut both of your guys’ hair. And I’ll never let you fall again.”

 

* * *

 

The wind is loud.

Nick can hear it slamming against the windows. The frames creaked, groaning over the force. It crept in through the cracks underneath and slipped under the blankets, leaving him chilled and cold, no one to warm him up. Ghetto was on duty this night; it always seemed like he was on duty on the worst nights. It’s way too cold.

He tries to remember the dream he was having. Sky looking upon him, the airplane leaving trails in the sky, falling and breaking his collarbone. Or was it his leg? He can’t tell: his memory is going fuzzy, static filling in the gaps where he can't make sense of things.

Nick rolls over and tries to go back to bed. The memories of forgetting were never good ones. He needs to stop focusing on them when things are quiet and the bed is cold. He shivers underneath the covers. The fucking wind won't let up, screaming and moaning outside. He swears he can hear voices in it, screaming and moaning along with the weather. They beg, plead, claw at the walls and demanding to be recognized, to let their voices be heard. The wind brushes across his face. The voices cry.

A pillow is right next to him. He grabs it and presses it against his ears, screwing his eyes and gritting his teeth. The sounds let up, but just barely—they move closer to him, whispering against the pillow and running hands along his cheeks.

“Just SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Nick yells at them, hurling the pillow at the window. It slams against it much harder than expected, and the voices disappear. He’s shaking.

When he looks around his room, no one is there. He pushes himself up and looks underneath the bed, in the cracks between the bedside drawer and the bed, the covers: no one is there. Nick presses a hand to his head, groaning loudly. God, he feels so stupid. He just fucking yelled at voices that were probably a result of his dream, or from just hearing things wrong. He should be glad that no one heard him do it. At least, he hoped they didn’t. So far, Nick hadn’t heard anyone come by, so that meant he was in the clear. Probably.

He lays back down, pulling the covers up to his chin. The bed is cold as ever. Voices pick up again with the wind, never relenting.

Nick closes his eyes and tries to ignore them. Tries to fall back asleep, in this cold, cold room. He swears he feels a dip on the bed, a phantom feeling of someone (or something) brushing a curl behind his ear.

Okay. That was enough. Nick threw back the covers, grabbed his sweater, pulled it over the tank top he usually wore to bed, and stormed out.

The hall was dark as ever. No one was up, and he could see no lights from underneath peoples’ doors. The hall was dark as ever, and no one traveled through them—save for one, wincing as his feet hit the frozen floors.

When he passed into the common room, he swore he saw someone. Nick threw the closest doors open, searching through them and underneath chairs and tables, peering back out into the halls that bled into this room, but he couldn’t find anyone or anything.

Nick looked behind him. Passing back, trailing a spectral hand across the room as they walked out of view, a person. He blinked hard and opened his eyes. They were gone. No one was there. No one except for him, shivering in drab clothes and a sweater. Though he knew no one was there, he refused to go back to his room. The… “person” was heading back that way. If they did exist, he wouldn’t be the one meeting them. He’d leave that to someone with a gun who wasn’t half asleep and fucked up from static ringing in their ears. He entered the cafeteria.

No one was there as well. A single light was on, glowing over the kitchen. Nick pulled out a chair and sat, holding his head in his hands. When he looked back on it, he swore the figure was gesturing towards him— _no, no, no, Nick, we’re not having these kinds of thoughts._

“Jump!” Sky calls. “I’ll catch you!”

Nick whips his head back. His heart is beating a million miles per hour in his chest, ricocheting around his ribcage. No one is there. _No one is fucking there, Nick, stop with this bullshit._

He’s sitting at a CDC table. He’s sitting on top of a tree, looking down at his brother as he holds out his arms to catch his fragile six-year-old self. A self who didn’t know what the future had to hold. The voices pick up again, whispering in his ear and pulling on his sweater sleeve. Is that the figure again or his arm? He can’t tell.

The chair is pushed out from underneath him—or is it?—and he stands up. Wind is sweeping through the room. His hair is blowing past him. No windows are open in the room.

Someone beckons to him. Nick feels sick, his stomach doing backflips over and over and over again. They beckon to him again. He swears he can see them smile, a kind, trusting smile. They beckon one last time. He stumbles towards them. His legs don’t feel quite… his. It feels like someone else is controlling him, leading him to the figure. Something pushes on his back, pushing him forwards. The figure smiles again and disappears down the hall.

Nick follows.

He can feel hands on his wrists, leading him. They pass through halls, halls, hall, halls, halls. Halls he had never seen before, halls he had seen too many times. He blinks and for a moment he’s back in the White House, running up towards the room. _Blink_. He’s back at the CDC.

There have been too many unfamiliar halls. He pulls back and the figure returns, shadowed by what looks to be a few others. They frown. Something catches on his sweater. Something whispers in his ear. _Do what must be done_. Nick continues forward.

Faintly, he is aware of how long they’ve been walking. It seems like hours, going around and around and around the CDC. He has no idea where he is, but they seem to know where they’re going. _Just a little further now,_  they egg on, pressing him forward and tugging on his sweater.

“Where are we going?” he asks them. His voice echoes around the room they’re in. He doesn’t know where it is. Nick stopped paying attention a while ago. (Or did they make him?)

 _It’ll be okay,_  they whisper back. _Things will get better soon._

“Are you sure?”

_You can trust us. Everything will be okay._

A voice in the back of his head is asking him what will be okay, what’s going on, but he pushes it out. His legs are starting to grow weary. He doesn’t know if it’s from walking or the lack of sleep. _Just a little bit further. We’re almost there now._

They came upon a door. He’s never seen this one before, despite growing familiar with most of the CDC. “Where are we?” he asks, frowning. The shapes don’t respond to him, only gesturing towards the door with more urgency. He pushes it open, the door slamming into the wall beside it. Nick could feel a slight breeze floating onto him.

The roof was frozen. The roof was as frozen as his bed had been, with the wind creeping underneath his sheets and chilling him to the bone. It was almost unnaturally cold.

From here he could see the entirety of Atlanta. From the skyscrapers in the distance to the twinkling lights of office buildings and malls that had been used as refuge from the cruel outside. From the place where they found Sabre to the place where Ross found them, milling over experiments and waiting for them to fall right into place. In all honesty, the city was gorgeous, despite the fact it had been taken over by the steady force of nature and by people who were trying their best to survive. It looked much too pretty to be in a world like this, in an apocalypse like this.

 _One could say the same about yourself,_  a voice sneered.

Nick whips his head towards the voice. No one is there. All the figures are gathered further away, all of them smiling at him the way they always are. _Didn’t one of them frown earlier?_ he thought. _No, they didn’t,_ he reminds himself, and the figures beam.

A hand pushes on his back. When he looks back, he can see a person towering over him. Their figure is the same as all the others’, but the vibe feels different. While the others’ smiles had been wide and welcoming, this one felt more… sad, melancholic, even. It pushes him towards the ledge, towards all the other figures, but… he doesn’t wanna move. He doesn’t know why, but he just doesn’t

Someone else tugs on his sleeve, pushes his shoulders, prods his back, and eventually, he relents. Stumbles over to the ledge with the wind whistling past his ears. The city is so, so small from a distance and he’s amazed something that big could look this small. It was almost surreal. Why would anyone not want to see something like this? But why on the roof….

Nick turns back to the figures, confusion boiling in his brain. “What are we doing here?” he asks them. They chuckle as if to say “oh, Nick” and cluck their tongues. He can barely make them out anymore, the only thing really noticeable being the voices whispering to him.

 _Jump,_  they whisper. _We’ll catch you._

It sounds so much like his brother that he’s nearly thrown off guard. He feels woozy, the height starting to get to them. He swears he hears something like footsteps from somewhere, a voice calling something. He can’t see them anymore but he can feel them—the way they stiffen when the sounds start and tug on him again and again and again (and again).

 _Jump,_  they insist. _It’ll be like a trust fall. It’s simply a trust fall._

Their voices aren’t like his brother’s. They’re more urgent, more demanding, more of a snarl than anything Sky has ever said to him. The stars shine bright overhead, illuminating nothing on the wide roof of the CDC. No figures gesture towards him: they only push on his back and ask him over and over again to jump, that they’ll catch him. They say that they’ll catch him. They will catch him.

The wind is so cold. Much, much colder than he was expecting. It rolls over the sound of someone yelling and over his body, chilling him to the bone. The touches are ever colder—them pulling him forward, pushing him forward.

 _Jump_. It’s a command.

Nick takes a step forward and lets his body fall.

He is barely given a second to register what the fall feels like, how much colder his body got in that second he was airborne.

Then, a hand catches his arm.

Another wraps around his waist, pulling him up with little-to-no effort. Their skin feels so warm compared to him that it almost burns, he almost shrinks away in pain. He’s so, so cold and their arms are so, so warm and it feels so strange yet familiar.

Nick looks up and he’s on the roof of the CDC in someone's arms. The figures are gone (they probably weren't real to begin with) and he can barely remember how he got here. All Nick can remember is waking up, leaving his room, sitting down in the cafeteria before everything becomes weird and staticky, almost as if his mind doesn’t want him to remember how he got there. (It was probably intended for him to never need to find his way up here again. They were trying to get him off the roof, after all.)

The person is so, so familiar. When Nick looks up, he can see the face of Ghetto, eyes screwed shut with his arms wrapped around Nick tighter than he’s ever felt before. He looks down and then feels tears drip onto the top of his head. They’re white hot against his frozen skin and he feels a guilt he’s never felt before. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know why.

“Why?”

It’s all he says. Nothing else, nothing more. He doesn’t yell at Nick, doesn’t demand to know why he was up there or why he tried to do what he did. It’s barely a question it itself—the little “why?” he asked, it feels more like a statement. Ghetto doesn’t ask why he did what he did, he asked why would he want to do that. Or the reverse, Nick can’t tell. Nick can’t really tell anything— _all_ of his views are conflicting, every little word dragging him further down. He doesn’t _know_ “why.” He feels sick to his stomach. He’s starting to wish Ghetto had yelled at him instead of leaving him wondering.

According to Gray, they had that problem before. A scientist—a nice lady everyone always referred to as “E”—threw herself from her window after the pressure became too much to handle. She was always calm, always collected, always willing to listen or help someone out. No one knew why she did it, but she did.

The story was retold to every person that walked through the CDC doors. A plea to seek help, to open up to people. Nick had heard that story a million times, but he never thought anything of it.

And at that moment, sitting on the CDC roof, cradled in Ghetto’s arms, the story came back to him.

It takes him a second, after the initial realization to gather his bearings. In that second, a million things happen. Ghetto stops crying, and rests his cheek against Nick’s head; the sun starts to rise, blooming streaks of pink and red and purple across the sky; the CDC starts to rise, and Nick can hear people moving outside and running down the halls and yelling to each other. He’s stories above them but he can hear them all yet can hear absolutely nothing over the drumming of his heart. A million things happen: four things happen, chronologically ordered, one step at a time. Someone once told him that the second before realization was the calm before the storm.

Whoever said that was a fucking liar.

He’s crying before everything kicks in.

It barely registers in his mind. Ghetto’s thumb is on his face, wiping away a tear he didn’t realize was there and murmuring into his hair. It feels strange, alien, despite the fact that they’ve spent more nights than he could count curled up next to each other, desperate to chase away the cold and loneliness.

And if the world was kinder, it would’ve left them like that. Chasing away the cold and loneliness on that roof, watching the sunrise. If the world was kinder they would’ve spent hours talking, making jokes and laughing and ignoring their responsibilities. If the world was kinder, they wouldn’t have even been on this roof. If the world was kinder, Nick would’ve hunted down Ghetto that night, and told him everything he couldn’t before. They would’ve had a moment like this, but it would’ve been more comforting. The next morning, Nick would’ve found Shelby and babbled on for god-knows how long. She would’ve shoved him and laughed for taking up her time. He would’ve shoved her back.

When they were younger, Shelby cried more. She cried after cutting her hair, cried after scraping her knee, cried after watching Bambi—you name it. And every time, no matter how small the incident, Nick would take her face into his hands and tell her that she was too pretty to cry. And when she laughed through her tears and said that no one was too pretty to cry, he would insist she was. They compromised by saying that she was a pretty crier.

He cries, and it’s not pretty.

Later, Ghetto will say to him that it was haunting, watching him cry. And that would make sense. Nick had never cried in front of the others—the closest to it would be as a child with Sky and Shelby, and in front of two of his close friends’ graves, unknowing that Jin was approaching him. On the latter, he collected himself quickly and the doctor didn’t suspect a thing. This time, he didn’t.

Ghetto held him close as he sobbed a horrid, heart-wrenching sound. Kissed his head and pulled him closer than he ever had before. The crying is terrible and Nick feels so, so vulnerable in a way he never had before. (He has before, but sometimes it’s hard to focus when static fills your thoughts and you’re sobbing into your lover’s chest.)

The sun is rising in the distance and he can’t see it. His head is pounding from some sort of headache and he’s hiccuping every time he’s not sobbing and everything feels so, so wrong and so, so bad.

“Babe,” Ghetto says. “Do you want me to get Shelby?”

“S-stay,” Nick begs.

And so he does. Ghetto stays and kisses his head (and nose and cheek and lips but that comes later) and holds him close and most importantly, he stays. And the tears don’t stop for a while—not minutes, maybe not even hours. But he’s safe now.

But wrapped up and safe, he hardly notices the figures standing to the side, just out of sight. They smile.


End file.
